A nagging suspicion had taken root in Leo's mind from the moment he witnessed the giantess sparring with the Empress. His artifact was near-perfect, yet the Bridge Sentinel had previously sensed something. While the giantess didn't radiate the same hunger, she possessed an ancient, keen awareness.
Leo suspected that the bridge sentinel might have caught the scent of his primordial essence during his skirmish with the Stone-Eater Locusts. The wound had been microscopic and healed instantly, but for a titan, a single drop was a loud declaration.
He couldn't afford a single drop of blood to be spilled here. There was no telling how a creature of her magnitude would respond to the presence of a primordial bloodline.
Before Leo could initiate, Hye-na surged forward. Her silver aura cut through the air like a comet's tail. The giantess didn't even reach for her monolithic axe; she simply flicked a finger, the casual gesture generating a gale-force wind that threatened to uproot the surrounding trees.
''Too slow, human,'' the giantess rumbled, her voice like grinding tectonic plates.
But Hye-na was already gone. Utilizing Void Flicker, she materialized fifty meters above the giant's hand, her spear leveled in a desperate thrust. Leo watched with bated breath, but his hope died as the spear tip failed to penetrate. The giantess's skin was an impenetrable fortress of aether-dense hide.
The giantess offered a lazy yawn, her eyes heavy with boredom. ''Is that the extent of your strength?''
''How humiliating,'' Noel muttered, his grip tightening on his weapon.
Before she could be crushed like an insect, Hye-na vaulted backward, resetting her stance. Leo's eyes ignited with a cold, crimson fire. The temperature in the clearing plummeted, replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of blood. The earth shattered beneath his boots as he transformed into a blur of red light, his D-rank core flooding his system with unprecedented power.
The giant's gaze sharpened. 'He's fast,' she mused.
Leo detonated a high-pressure blood burst beneath him, propelling himself upward with the force of a ballistic missile.
The giantess, now intrigued, conjured a localized storm to intercept him. Still airborne, Leo manipulated his own blood into a shimmering whip, lashing it around a lock of the giant's hair to pivot himself toward her throat.
The giantess tracked his movement with a smirk. She swept her hand toward him with terrifying velocity—a strike that would have leveled a building. At the moment of impact, Leo vanished.
'One puncture. That is all I require,' Leo thought, his pulse thundering in his ears.
He bypassed the thick cords of her neck, aiming instead for the delicate, vein-mapped skin near the collarbone. He swung the blood-coated shards of his blade with every ounce of his D-rank evolution. ''AHHHH!''
The impact generated a shower of sparks, but the blade could not bite. The metal groaned and shattered into a thousand fragments. ''Shit!''
Before he could fall, a single word echoed in his mind: ''Swap.''
In a flicker of aether, Leo was replaced by Hye-na. Her eyes flared with a brilliant, solar gold as she channeled a Pseudo Epic-grade skill. The Solar Flare Spear hummed with incandescent power, its tip driving into the giantess's collarbone with the weight of a falling star.
The skin finally gave way. A small, clean laceration opened on the giantess's neck.
''Is that it?'' the giantess mocked, though her pupils dilated at the unexpected sting. ''An itchy puncture?''
Hye-na's strength evaporated, and she began a long, silent fall toward the forest floor. She met Leo's eyes with a heavy breath. 'The opening is yours.'
Leo's face broke into a predatory grin, his eyes glowing like dying stars. He reached out to the blood escaping the giantess's wound, exerting his absolute authority over the fluid. He didn't attack her from the outside; he disrupted the very rhythm of the life force surging through her titanic frame.
The giant's mockery died in her throat. An internal seismic shift rocked her body. Her hand crashed into the earth to stabilize her massive weight as her balance failed. She winced, the veins in her neck bulging and twitching as she struggled for breath.
The Empress watched from her vantage point, her eyes wide as she perceived the cellular-level chaos Leo was inflicting. Her gaze settled on the shimmering crimson chain around Leo's neck. 'A mythical artifact,' she thought, a cold shiver running down her spine.
The giantess's fingers dug into the mountainside with such force that the ancient stone disintegrated into a fine powder. She gazed down at Leo, her monolithic eye shimmering with a mixture of disbelief and profound respect. She could feel him pulling at her life force, like a tiny needle trying to move a huge curtain.
''How exciting,'' she grinned, her eyes sparkling like she'd found something precious.
Leo's jaw was locked tight, his frame shuddering as his complexion turned a sickly, translucent white. He was channeling the entirety of his D-rank core into the thread, his nose bleeding freely, yet his crimson gaze never wavered. He understood the futility of trying to wound her, but he had gambled on the hope that his power could force a single step. Instead, the colossus remained bolted to the peak, her posture suggesting she was savoring the violent rhythm he had forced upon her heart.
The connection flickered and died. As Hye-na plummeted toward the forest floor, Leo expended his final reserves to manifest a pressurized cushion of blood-aether. It caught her with the softness of a cloud, depositing her safely onto the forest carpet. Only then did the crimson lord allow the link to sever completely.
Leo collapsed to a knee, his lungs burning. 'I was so close,' he thought, his hand digging into the soil and crushing a clump of clover.
His companions surged forward. ''Leader!'' Noel cried out, hauling Leo to his feet. Leo was a ghost of himself, his breathing a series of ragged, uneven hitches. Nearby, Ben and Luna provided support to a dazed Hye-na.
The giantess settled back, her massive chest rising and falling as her internal systems stabilized. She touched the minute laceration on her throat, watching it vanish beneath her regenerating hide, and then fixed her attention on the exhausted youth.
A heavy silence fell over the team. They had witnessed the impossible—a mortal making a titan scream—but the objective had remained unfulfilled. The mountain had not moved. But as they prepared for the sting of defeat, the giantess's laughter shattered the tension.
''Haha! A grand performance, little human!'' Her laughter was a physical force, rattling the leaves of the highest canopy. Leo lifted his head, meeting her terrifying, wide-set grin. ''It has been many centuries since my blood sang with such intensity.''
The confusion among the hunters was palpable. The giantess rose to her full, staggering height, her shadow swallowing the clearing. ''You both earned my respect. You looked into the abyss and did not blink. A soldier may fall, but a warrior never hides.''
''Now,'' she rumbled, the air pressure shifting around them. ''Which of you shall I deliver to the sky first?''
The realization hit them like a lightning strike. ''OH YAAA!'' Noel bellowed, punching the air. Luna beamed, her hands resting on Hye-na's shoulders. Even the stoic Hye-na allowed a small, weary breath of victory to escape her lips.
The giantess tapped the earth with a gentle, rhythmic thud. Radiant, emerald roots erupted from the soil, spiraling around Leo and Hye-na in a cocoon of primordial life. Within heartbeats, the roots crumbled into ash, leaving the duo completely revitalized, their mana pools brimming, and their fatigue erased.
'Look at that boy,' Athena Evergreen mused from the heights, her fingers tracing the emerald hilt of her blade. 'He's already learned the most important lesson of the Ruler—power isn't about what you have, it's about what you can take.'
The colossus lowered her palm, a vast stage of calloused skin. ''Step forward. The heights await.''
The team instinctively cleared a path. Hye-na shared a final, meaningful glance with Leo, offering a sharp nod of gratitude before stepping onto the center of the giantess's hand.
The giantess drew back her arm, the muscles rippling like shifting hills. ''Hold your breath, shortie. It's a long way up.''